Review Summary

Androgynous young men with liquid eyes and creamy English accents are as essential to teenage fantasy films as alternate worlds and complicated glossaries. And if they possess supernatural powers — like the ability to wear head-to-toe pleather without sweating uncontrollably — so much the better. In “The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones,” the lead androgyne is Jace (Jamie Campbell Bower), blond and lithe and so pillow-lipped that you want to nap every time you look at him. Jace is a Shadowhunter — part human, part angel, all sex appeal — a being who, like Keanu Reeves in “Constantine,” hunts down demons and rubs them out. Though Shadowhunters and their prey are swarming all over New York City, regular folks, or “mundanes,” can’t see them — a cloaking courtesy that’s likely to be wasted on New Yorkers, who would probably just roll their eyes and move on. — Jeannette Catsoulis